Hogarth 2 18/05/2021 15:38 Hogarth
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Detail from ‘The Country Dance’,The Analysis of Beauty Plate 2, etching and engraving, 1753 Hogarth 2 18/05/2021 15:38 HOGARTH Life in Progress JACQUELINE RIDING PROFILE BOOKS Hogarth 3 18/05/2021 15:38 First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Profile Books Ltd 29 Cloth Fair London ec1a 7jq www.profilebooks.co.uk Copyright © Jacqueline Riding, 2021 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 78816 347 7 eISBN 978 1 78283 611 7 Hogarth 6 18/05/2021 15:38 Contents Prologue 1 Interlude One 12 1 Good Child 31 Interlude Two 71 2 Mock King 82 Interlude Three 121 3 Moral Subject 136 Interlude Four 177 4 History Maker 188 Interlude Five 214 5 Feeling Fellow 223 Interlude Six 247 6 Nature’s Dramatist 264 Interlude Seven 304 7 True Patriot 313 Interlude Eight 363 8 Original Genius 380 Epilogue 443 Notes 447 Bibliography 484 List of Illustrations 498 Acknowledgements 504 Index 507 Hogarth 9 18/05/2021 15:38 PROLOGUE ‘Wond’ring Muse’* From deep within the infinite realm, tentative light beams pulse and flicker, hinting at unnumbered stars, of untold planets. Close by, the dense black yields to the sun’s glorious warmth and burning colour, illumining our fragile globe and her pale moon. Then, from the region of this world, a pointed flame appears. It passes quickly over and on, weaving through the universe, dipping here and there, skimming across the surface of those distant spheres, observing all fresh wonders. In the heightened imaginings of the poet, stirred by discoveries too incredible to be the product of mere human thought, this comet is the soul of nature’s philosopher, mankind’s wondering muse, great Newton on his daily orbit of divine cre- ation. Through him the innermost recesses of the conquered heavens are thrown open, the archives of hidden truth unlocked. Now turning towards that shining orb, we pass down through the regions of the sky, the winds and cloud, and then, further still to mortality’s low province, the mass of earth and water. Lordly Nineveh and Babylon are no more; noble Palmyra’s exposed ruins the sentinels of empire long lost. Next, across the middle sea to Eternal Rome where we behold the extremes of fate. For among the emblems of her modern boasted state, Rome’s temples are open to the sky, her columns dreadful in decay, her ancient greatness sunk. Onward, passing lofty mountains, valleys, forests and low plains, over the figs and vines of proud King Louis’s fertile domin- ions towards the island cluster on Europe’s western edge. As the sun sinks below the horizon, its last rays glister the curling form * John Hughes, The Ecstasy, London, 1720 Hogarth 1 18/05/2021 15:38 2 Hogarth of a mighty river, on whose banks now sprawls, so the inhabitants claim, a new Rome: the metropolis of London. This is our destination, or rather, to be exact, the upper floor of the Bedford Arms tavern in the district called Covent Garden. We are here because on Friday 26 May 1732, in the fifth year of King George II’s reign, the tavern’s club members have gathered to drink, to eat and to engage in conversation of a bluff and convivial nature. Only five of the original party are now present. These are the dwindling hours of a glorious late spring day: a day that signals summer’s imminent approach, with all the hope and promise this might bring. On such an occasion an Englishman, whether a Londoner by birth or circumstance, who rarely has time or need to leave his beloved city, and while gazing absently from an upper window into the familiar, hectic streets below, might feel the sudden impulse to go far away: to succumb, however briefly, to the lure of simple pastoral pleasures and yearn, then, to follow the ancestral siren-call of the ploughman, the cockle-seller, the peasant bard. To venture, like the pilgrim, beyond the confines of the city, through the verdant land, to the estuary of a great river and to glimpse the vast terrains and oceans beyond. One of the company is indeed gazing from the tavern’s open window at the last of the sunset already described. What happened next has never been explained fully. Perhaps a wayward spark from that disciple of Phoebus, Sir Isaac’s happy lighted spirit, dropped to earth, setting aflame these desires in its unsuspecting host. Or, as likely, it was nothing more than an ardent wish that the night’s revelries should not, must not end so soon: the remaining club stalwarts neither too sleepy nor boozed enough to need the immediate comfort of bed and bolster. Whatever its path hither, an inspiration came, took root, the resulting idea voiced to those gathered, the company responded in accord and so, after scrawled notes to nearby wives and family were exchanged for fresh shirts and coin, these five friends ventured into the night on their own journey of discovery, along that same river, the Thames and his sister the Medway, as far as the Kentish Isle of Sheppey off Eng- land’s south-eastern coast, with no particular idea or expectation of what would happen next. Hogarth 2 18/05/2021 15:38 Prologue 3 Now you may be thinking that countless such journeys have occurred over the centuries, some, frankly, far more noteworthy than this appears to be and, in fairness, you would be right. Except- ing that such workaday travels are rarely recorded in any detail and are, therefore, an aspect of our forebears’ lives that is all but lost to us. And, more important still, a member of this particular group of travellers will be described justifiably, indeed within his own lifetime, as one of the most significant individuals to have been born in these islands: supplying posterity with a ready shorthand, not just for a style of graphic satire or comic grotesque, but a type of character or behaviour and even, rightly or wrongly, an entire era of British history. The fact that we know anything at all about this modest adven- ture rests on the survival of a manuscript, written just after the event and rejoicing in the ponderous title, ‘An account of what Seem’d most Remarkable in the Five Days Peregrination of the Five Following persons Vizt. Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill & Forrest’ with the accompanying exhortation, A‘ bi tu et fac Similiter’ (‘Go and do the same’).1 The text was later trans- formed into a doggerel poem by the Reverend William Gostling, a resident of Kent and friend to the participants.2 The manuscript, in a neat hand using a quill pen and brown ink (typical of the period), plots the towns and villages they passed through and the inns they stayed at, the various repasts enjoyed with expenditure itemised, the modes of transport used, the characters they encountered and the incidents that occurred. This chronicle is further enlivened by the presence of several picaresque drawings and a map. In this way it is both the record of a journey and the means to relive it, whether alone or in company, as part of the deliberations at the Bedford Arms tavern club for example, in the imagination or in person. The claim that the account concerns a peregrination or pilgrimage, coupled with the promise to recount what was ‘most remarkable’ during the five days, encourages the expectation of philosophi- cal depth or, at the very least, events of some importance. Yet, to be clear from the outset, The Peregrination (as it shall be known) is not, in any traditional sense, a pilgrimage. And it is debatable whether anything remarkable, as we might define it, happens at all. Hogarth 3 18/05/2021 15:38 4 Hogarth Of the five individuals, our focus here is, of course, Mr William Hogarth, now in his thirty-fourth year, a painter and engraver known to his close friends as Billy.3 His progress, from birth in 1697 to this moment, will be charted in due course but, for now, it should be observed that the year 1732 signalled a transformation in the fortunes of this gentleman: indeed his recent publishing of a set of engravings following the decline and fall of a young naïve woman turned prostitute may have been the stimulus for the gathering – a celebration of sorts – and the impromptu five-day journey a respite from a business that had increased dramatically, almost overnight. Hogarth’s companions are Ebenezer Forrest, lawyer, playwright and scribe of The Peregrination, William Tothall, former merchant seaman now draper and appointed treasurer for the duration, and fellow artists John Thornhill and Samuel Scott, who, with Hogarth, supplied the drawings. These men are not well known; they are not of the status of his other collaborators and friends, such as the author, playwright and magistrate Henry Fielding or the actor-manager David Garrick. Yet they represent Hogarth’s friendships from the years before he was firmly established as an artist and when his fame, specifically as a commentator on modern life, had not yet fully taken hold: a circumstance which, counter- intuitively perhaps, became something of a burden to his artistic ambition in later years.